Directions

From Westport, take State Highway 67 north to Waimangaroa – turn right from the main road, on to the road to Denniston. Drive up the Denniston Road to the top, and follow the signs to Burnetts Face carpark. If the volunteer-run Friends of the Hill information centre sign is out, stop at the old schoolhouse first. There are fascinating stories and photos galore along with some good ole living history of some if our older Denniston community members are there.

Denniston - Coalbrookdale Walk

Where the first coal on Denniston was discovered in 1860!

Burnetts Face carpark is the start of the Coalbrookdale Walk.  A good shingle road behind Denniston (still used by coal trucks) leads to the start of the walkway. This follows part of a rope road that carried coal from the mines to the top of the Denniston Incline. Relics include tunnels, foundations, a haulage winch and the country's best remaining example of a mine fanhouse.  This fanhouse pumped air into the huge Coalbrookdale mine so miners could breathe.

History and how it got its name

Coalbrookdale was where Julius Haast, a German geologist working for the Nelson Provincial Council, discovered a huge seam of coal eight feet two inches thick.  With him was James Burnett, an English coalmine engineer and Maori guides.

Haast named the valley Coalbrookdale after a coal mining village in Shropshire, England.  In  honour of his assistant, he named the rocky cliff above the valley, Burnett’s Face.

Burnett was obviously a very clever man – it was he who estimated in 1862 that the Coalbrookdale area alone held over 72 million tons of extractable coal…and he was the visionary who suggested a simple way of bringing big loads of coal from clifftop to valley floor – an incline rail or cableway operated by gravity, braked by water, with loaded trucks hauling the empty ones back up again.

Itinerary Ideas

Combine this walk with the Town Walk, and make sure not to miss the restored Incline area.

For an interesting add-on to your Denniston walking experiences, turn left before the bridge over the Waimangaroa river on State Highway 67 and follow the gravel road towards Waimangaroa Beach (a stunning beach in its own right).  Towards the end of it is a cemetery.  Strangely, all its graves instead of facing the ocean looking west, face Denniston.  The stories on the headstones tell it all – the hardship, the courage, the early deaths and accidents.